Biblical Counseling - What is Biblical Counseling? - Part I

It's not all of them, okay? So when we look at this, you start to add it up. Biblical counseling isn't some, you know, hey, let's make an appointment with this guy who's a certified biblical counselor. Instead, it is something that is all throughout the New Testament.

And it's believers to believers. And it's called for again and again and again. Let's take a look at the first one, parakaleo, which is one of the more common ones. To aid or help, comfort, console, encourage, urge, exhort and admonish. That's a lot, isn't it? In that one word. And we'll take a look at this in a little more detail in a bit.

Next one, related to it, paraclisis. This is the noun form. Anybody ever hear of the paraclete? This is the Holy Spirit, this is the Paraclete, that's another related word there. Interesting. Okay, now, next one. Paramusia, similar meaning to Paraclesis, but with greater tenderness. Isn't that interesting? Even more tender. And we're going to see, there's a place here where Paramusia and Paraclete, Paraclesis or Paracleto get put together. We'll look at that in a bit here. Excuse me. Aeteo, similar meaning to Paracleo, but a bit less intense or forceful, a little more mild.

Paragoria, speaking with another in words of consolation, comfort, and solace. Next one, Nutheteo, to warn, admonish, or exhort. And the last one is funny, it sounds like English all alone. One another typically with an encouragement or exhortation to action.

So those are some words, and these are some of the prime words, there are other related words. similar kinds of words that this doesn't cover, but at least gives you a start. There are a number of different words scattered throughout the New Testament that are related to biblical counseling. Now, there are other words that are, you know, derived, related words for each of the above words we've got there in the bullets. There are also words that characterize it. In other words, give further description, qualifications, how it's supposed to take place. Okay? So we have not only those words, but other things that go along with, that give us some guidance on what that's supposed to look like.

And it talks about the interactions or the messages from believer to believer. It's the interactions that we have amongst ourselves. It isn't just spiritual information, like here's a disc, here's some paper, here's a book. It is not just passing data along. but rather it is expressing the person of Christ and directs others to Christ.

That's key. That's key. It's not just data. It's not just information. It's not just bits and bytes. I can't hand you the flash drive and say we're done. There's a catch word for all that and it's called data dump. Yeah, this is exactly what it isn't. It's not a data dump, is it?

Biblical counseling, let's take a look here. Biblical counseling, and this is an important paragraph right in the middle there, is the personal carrying out of the message of the book of Acts and the New Testament letters directed from a believer to another believer. And that may be in plural. And that message is not just spiritual information, but is the inspired Word of God that reveals and expresses the very person of Christ and directs others toward Christ. Biblical counseling has as its goals that each believer be, and here's the four bullets here that are key, walking in intimate fellowship with Christ. When we think of the word counseling, what do we often think of just in our culture? Somebody says, I'm going to a counselor. I'm broke and I need straightening out. What else do you think of?

Anger management. Let's manage this volcano. Some kind of psychological problem might have to do with that. Here's something else. Do you just drop in on a counselor? Typically, you think of, I have to make an appointment. And there may be a bill that goes along with it, too. Right? Yeah. And that's enough to cause you to need counseling right there. Okay? Yeah. That may be enough right there to cause you to need counseling.

But look at this. This is walking in intimate fellowship with Christ. That's bullet number one. It is our interactions with one another that are in the direction of stimulating, motivating, urging, teaching, admonishing, all those things in terms of bringing one another to a walk with Christ, a closer walk with Christ and fellowship with Him. The next one, expressing the Spirit-given giftedness that they have by God's grace. That's also biblical counseling. Have you ever heard of the gift of encouragement? to the gift of encouragement, paraklesis. Participating in the building up of the body of Christ as a spiritual, now what's the word we have there? Spiritual organism.

Why is it important that we make the distinction? Why don't we just say that when we get together here at church it's just an organization? When we use the word organization for church, I notice that Wayne's chuckling. Organization is not, you know, the key point and function, is it? Why do we make the distinction between an organism and the organization? Why does that matter? An organization, you can just draw up a whole list of categories, rules, this and that, and that's all it is.

It has no life. Yeah, yeah. Ah, see here is an important key. The organism, which is the body of Christ, has a life. What life is that? Yes. And an organization, and boy you can organize it until every little detail is pinned down. But an organization, as organized as you can get it, does not have the life of Christ.

But the body of Christ is, by God's intent, the container of the life of Christ, the channel, the medium. Okay. Contributing to the growth of each individual believer and to the growth of the whole church body toward maturity in Christ. contributing to the growth of each believer and the whole body for maturity in Christ. As believers, here's God's intent. The life of Christ in you, the life of Christ through you, individually, each one of us, the life of Christ between and among us. That's the body. That's what the Lord has in mind. And biblical counseling, that is truly biblical, is aimed in that direction. That's what it's for.

It's not, well, my head's all messed up and I need to go get the counselor to straighten me out. It's not, I got an appointment at 2.30 to go see the counselor and I better be there because he's going to send me a bill whether I go or not. It's not about that. It is instead what we just talked about here. You notice what comes out with these? It's about Christ, it's about Christ, it's about Christ, it's about Christ. Yeah, and that's the world's view, isn't it?

And even if you go to, like there's a fairly substantial seminary around here, You go into the bookstore, about half of the books that are for the courses are for counseling, and an awful lot of it has nothing to do with the Bible. But biblical counseling is all throughout scripture, and it's amazing. All I have to do is study the Bible, and I've got it. And that's what we're going to be doing as we go through here. It's not going to be bringing in a bunch of stuff about this philosopher said this, or this psychologist said that, or this analyst came up with this model or something. No. It's going to be, what does God's word say? Biblical counseling is specifically intended for believers. The primary need, as we mentioned, for unbelievers is salvation. But for believers, once a person comes to faith in the Lord and is saved, biblical counseling all of a sudden has a place. Let's look at the next page. It's titled at the top right there, Next to Your Brother or Sister in Christ.

Let's take a closer look at this Greek word parakaleo. As we said briefly, it carries the idea of aid or help, comfort, console, encourage, urge, exhort and admonish. The authors of the New Testament used this word a lot, or related words in their appeal to the believers to whom they wrote, they called upon believers to do the same. So here is an example that they covered in the Romans elective not too many months ago. Romans 12, 1 and 2, Therefore I urge you Parakaleo, brethren. And that parakaleo is a compound word. Para means to come alongside, or means alongside, and kaleo is to call. So to call alongside is the breakdown of that word there.

I urge you that as I come alongside and call you, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God. You could carry that across with this idea. Therefore, I counsel you, brethren. Therefore, I counsel you. It's I come alongside. Could he order them? Did he have to do this, I urge you? Could he just tell them, you've got to do it? Could he? As an apostle, he had the authority, and in places he did. But what does he do? He comes alongside them. as their brother in the Lord.

And he says, I counsel you in this way. And it's translated there, I urge you. Present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God, which is a spiritual service of worship, and do not be conformed to this world. Do not be conformed? He's really continuing his counseling, isn't he? Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good and acceptable and perfect.

Here's 1 Corinthians 1.10. Can anybody tell us about the church at Corinth? What was this church like? They needed counseling. They needed biblical counseling.

So guess what he does? The first nine verses in 1 Corinthians 1 are really cool verses, but it sort of starts off with, Hi, I'm Paul. Verse 10 is where he starts into, here's the thing that you guys need to get straightened out. And the first thing he goes into here is this, and what does he start off with?

I exhort you, I parakaleo you, I come alongside and call for you, brethren, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree, and that's specifically, literally, that you all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions among you, and that you be made complete in the same mind and same judgment. I counsel you. I come alongside and call you to do this. He could have just ordered them, couldn't he? He said, I'm an apostle, you guys better do this. But instead, he comes along as their alongside counselor. And he uses this word here again. 2 Corinthians 1, 3, and 4.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. Paraklesis. Here's the noun. form of parakaleo, who comforts us, parakaleo, in all our afflictions so that we will be able to comfort, parakaleo, those who are in any affliction with the comfort, paraklesis, with which we ourselves are comforted, parakaleomuthia, by God. So it's parakaleo plus muthia which implies tenderness. Notice, here's all this parakaleo and paraklesis, where does the tenderness come from?

Where does he put that in? From God. Isn't that cool? He says, here's all these things, and obviously they needed comfort, because that word just keeps popping up. But in the end, the tenderness comes from God. This is a God who comes alongside us as believers, and he does so tenderly.

Tenderly. Closely. The Lord does not want to have a, you know, he's a God way up there, you know, and we'd have no closeness. No, instead, the one place where he puts in the word tenderness in here is about God's approach coming alongside us. Tenderly.

2 Corinthians 2.8, Wherefore I urge you, parakaleo, to reaffirm your love for him. This was a fellow in 1 Corinthians that he told them, you better boot him out. Now he's repented of the sin that he was in. Now you need to come alongside him. He says, I urge you to reaffirm your love for him. I counsel you.

Ephesians 6. Here is Tychicus. He is the fellow who carried the letter to the Ephesians and the letter to the Colossians. So this fellow, Tychicus, I doubt he had any tics. The beloved brother and faithful minister in the Lord will make everything known to you. I have sent him to you for this very purpose so that you may know about us and that he may comfort your hearts. that he may counsel you.

And notice the counseling isn't just external. Where is it supposed to penetrate and touch? Hearts, right? So this isn't counseling that stands outside and stands at a distance. This is counsel that comes and touches at the very deepest part. He says, I'm sending this guy, he will have this ministry of counsel with you and it won't be just, here's some words and here's a letter, but he will comfort you, he will counsel alongside you in a way that will touch your hearts. 1 Thessalonians 5, 9-11, For God has not destined us for wrath, but for obtaining salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, so that whether we are awake or asleep, we will live together with him. Therefore, and now, this is him telling the believers there about what they are to do with each other, right? Here's parakaleo, one another, and build up one another just as your do it. Encourage one another. Come alongside and counsel one another. And what is this 1 Thessalonians 5 passage? They just studied 1 Thessalonians not too long ago in the other elective. What's the 1 Thessalonians passage talking about? The Rapture.

Basically it's, this is, look believers, the Lord's going to come for you, and you have a good, firm, solid basis for comforting one another, to come alongside, to counsel one another, okay? And build one another up with this truth. Ever hear, and you'll hear this on the news, they'll have some disastrous event, and they'll say, oh, we're going to send in a bunch of grief counselors. Now, part of the problem is usually a secular situation, and what kind of grief counseling are they going to do?

Well, the truth that you're shaking your head, they're probably shaking their head, too, because all they can do is say, oh, that's too bad, you know. Yeah, this isn't one of hope. It's just kind of, well, that's too bad and you'll get over it, you know. Deal with it, you know. Yeah, Tom? They may say in terms of dealing with it, all that crazy. Get it out of your system. Yeah, and oftentimes just look at it as a process you've got to go through and, you know, you'll get to the other side and get past the grief.

What this does is gives us a basis for comforting another believer that makes a difference right now. And it's a real basis, not just a, you'll get over it. It won't hurt so bad. It'll feel better when it stops hurting. Good. You know? And in saying that, that's not to say that there Certainly, yeah. But the point he's making here is there is substance to the hope that we have to offer. The encouragement is not just a you'll get over it. It'll stop hurting when you feel better. But rather to look at it and say no we have a certain hope. We will live together with Him.

Probably, in general, you could say all counseling, even if it's secular, strives to provide that truth and help people understand what's true about themselves or what's true about the world. Of course, we have God's perspective, which is far greater. We can encourage one another by pointing to the truth that God has laid out in Scripture.

In the secular world, unfortunately, they're just literally shooting in the dark. They have no idea. And so they can just kind of guess. I can't imagine that somebody that's thinking through it, you know, are probably going to see this person say yes and they don't know. They'll probably say, I don't know, this is just what I think. That's not very encouraging.

I think the main emphasis is just listening. The emphasis is on listening, personally. Certainly, there's that aspect to listening and coming alongside and being there. But his ex, pardon? Yeah, no solution. And that's the difference here. You know, I'm sure that many of you have been through and perhaps a number of times, you know, experience where someone that you loved and cared about, they're gone. The Lord takes them. And in the middle of that, certainly having this encouragement that's coming alongside doesn't make it all go away. The loss is still there.

But the perspective is entirely different. Entirely different. And that's key. Yeah, the perspective that we have as believers is entirely different and it is a genuine and valid and substantial encouragement that we have, not just a you'll get over it kind of thing.

Okay, Paul used this word parakaleo, this is the last paragraph there, of his appeal to the believers in Santicicus to comfort the hearts of the believers and called upon the believers in Thessalonica to encourage, notice the use of parakaleo, and it means different things in different contexts. In fact, Paul said that God even comforted the believers tenderheartedly, parakaleomuthia. So here's this parakaleo and a few other variations on that showing up in this passage.

Let's look at page 3 here. Here's another one of those words that's a counseling kind of word. And this one is Nuthetail. It's typically translated to warn, admonish, or exhort. It's a compound word. The word noose is mind. For example, we have the mind of Christ out of 1 Corinthians. That's this word, noose. means to place, so it's the idea of to place it in the mind. To place it in the mind.

Now, that little thought, place it in the mind, that's an interesting thing. Our place is not just to pass on the information. Well, I told you, right? But to actually place it personally in the mind of another believer. That's the idea. Why does that make a difference? Because if it's just information you're passing out, it's in one ear and out the other too much of the time.

Even if it isn't, it's just like, oh yeah, I'll remember that sometime. I don't know if I'll keep remembering, but it might be sometime. Who knows? If I have some information and I have to learn for a test, it's just information to learn for a test, isn't it? And that's as far as it goes.

The difference here is this placing in the mind is about spiritual truth that gets lived out and has eternal validity. That's better than any of my engineering books. Okay. So this aspect of biblical counseling is a placing of the truth in the mind of another believer. It is not just, here's some data, here's some information, take this flash drive and stick it in your ear, right? It is not that. It is, instead, placing valuable, eternal truth in the mind of another believer. Real different. What's the difference in the character of that truth? Why is that truth different from just, here's the answer for my test?

It's part of your spiritual growth. It's life. This is life we're talking about, not just, here's the answer for the test. And besides that, you can't cheat on this one. No cheating on this one. It's genuinely in the mind and it is about the very person of Christ. It is about his life. What we are passing along and placing in the mind of another believer, this is eternally and exceedingly valuable stuff. It's priceless and Visa just hasn't got a clue what they mean by it compared to Christ.

Here's Colossians 1.28, we proclaim him admonishing, nuthateo, every man. So that's Anthropos, so it doesn't mean just the males. And teaching every man with all wisdom so that we may present every man complete, that is mature in Christ. So that placing in the mind of another believer that aspect of counseling, That aspect is something that has a definite impact on that believer's maturity. Isn't that cool? Did you catch this? Counseling is not for a select few, but what did he say three times in there?

Every man. Every man. Every man. We haven't got a situation here like, okay, at our church, this is our growth group. Everybody else is still in diapers, but this is our growth group over here. No, it's every man, every single one, see? And it is God's intent that every single believer be growing. And guess what a part of it is? That's the nutha teo, that's the placing in the mind. This is something that every single believer has a part in with other believers. What's the goal of this counseling that goes on? Where is it headed? We just do this because we're supposed to? What's the goal in this counseling?

Spiritual maturity. See, it's headed somewhere. It is spiritual maturity. What does spiritual maturity look like? Pardon? Christ. Christ, yes. That's the measure. Okay? That's the measure. Okay. Romans 15, 14. In concerning you, my brethren, I myself also am convinced that you yourselves are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to admonish, there's a tale, who? One another. Ah.

Why would they be Well, why would he say something like this? Why would he say something like this? You are able to nooth-a-tail one another, to place truth in the mind of another. Why would he say that? He's writing this to the whole church. Why would he say such a thing?

Okay, they have been taught. One of the things we point out is back in chapter 6, he wrote to him in chapter 6, you know, don't you know, and of course you do, is the implication of the way it's written. And you know, you know this, you know that. And he states the things that they know, they have apparently already been taught, and he hasn't even been there yet.

But he's expressing here in Romans 15-14 that you are able to do this with one another. It's placing in the mind. So Paul didn't think that this nuciteo, this placing in the mind is something that he alone could do. He wrote to this church, and he had never actually been to the church, but he had enough information about them that he could express with confidence, you can do this with one another. Yeah, you can do that. He wrote to the believers in Thessalonica, we have a quote there, 1 Thessalonians 5, 12-14.

We request of you, brethren, that you appreciate those who diligently labor among you, and have charge over you and the Lord, and give you instruction, and that you esteem them very highly and love because of their work. Live in peace with one another. We urge you, brethren, admonish the unruly. Place it in their mind.

Encourage, this is the verb form of paramouthia, which is similar in meaning to the word paraklesis, but with greater tenderness. The fainthearted. Help the weak be patient. Here's another one. In Greek, we use the word patient and we don't know is it patient with circumstances or patients with people. The Greeks had two different words and you find here He says, be patient is macrothumia. That's specifically patience with people.

So have that patience with people. He says, just with those that are easy to get along with. You ever read, see these books or maybe even you see these one day seminars, how to deal with difficult people. Ever see those? Yeah. Does he say just be patient with the ones that are easy to get along with? No, with who? Everyone. Yeah. Be patient with everyone.

So these words are all woven together in the letters of the New Testament. And what we've seen here is, have you noticed on several of these verses, these words just keep cropping up again and again and again? So this isn't just an occasional thing that pops up in the New Testament. Instead, you'll find passages where these words just keep showing up again and again and again.

Why would that be? How come the words keep showing up? Yeah? Because those words are special. They come closest to expressing the character of Christ as they reveal what other truths there are intermingled with them. Okay. They express the character of Christ. Why else? What else do you see here? I'm going to keep cropping up. What's that? They're important? They're important, yes. They're important. He is repeatedly describing what is intended to be the interaction character among us as believers.

And that's why I said something several weeks ago that may have caught some folks by surprise. And that is, biblical counseling is something that is intended for every single believer. to participate in, whether on the receiving end or providing it. Yes, Jeremy? I'm sure we'll talk about this more, but especially when we talk about placing in the mind, there's an embassy there that's far, especially far greater than what we think of as counseling. one up, one down, a person that's kind of above.

But there's this true intimacy where something, a truth that has impacted you and that has become precious to you, you're sharing that. And because it's so precious to you, and because there's that love of Christ within us, it's that desire to see that other person, not just inform them like we say, but make it their own truth. This intimacy is not something you see in any of the secular counseling and unfortunately a lot of other Christian counseling. It's not about that one-on-one fellowship and that closeness which kind of overrides all that we're seeing here. Let's think about this.

What is true of the heart of every single believer? Who's there? Every single believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit. That's something we studied among other places in our Galatians study. Every single believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit all the time. So that's one. Who else is there? Christ. So the Holy Spirit indwells every single believer all the time. Christ indwells every single believer all the time.

If I, as a believer, am communicating with another believer, and it is done in dependence upon the Lord, in fellowship with Him, then what is the character of our communications? Certainly it's spiritual, isn't it? But even more than that, what's the character of our communications, one believer to another? And why would that be? We're talking about the person of Christ in every single believer. Does Christ know how to communicate with Christ? Yeah. This is a phenomenal thing that he's calling for here.

And that's one reason why we said earlier that this isn't something that's designed to work even between you as a believer and someone who is not a believer, particularly. And you notice, and we'll look at this more next time, you notice the repeated reference to one another? one another, one another, between believers, okay? Between believers. What is to keep the relationship between us from becoming, well, you may have seen this.

Ever seen the interaction between people and it looks like, oh, that person's this other person's project? Ever see that? He or she is my project. Is that what Paul's calling for? Or the other apostles are calling for? No. That's not what he has in mind. Why? First of all, where does it come from? It's the Spirit's work. Good. What else? We're all God's projects.

Ultimately, 2 Corinthians 3.18, who does the transforming? Not the other person. This is God's work that we are involved in.

It's not that person's my project. And to be on the receiving end of being that project isn't all that great either. You know, something's missing. That is not what's intended here, is it? This isn't a, this person's my project kind of deal. Alright. What is to keep it from being, or yeah, what's to keep the relationship here in biblical counseling from being, here's a bunch of spiritual information. Just data dump. What keeps it from being that?

The life of Christ. First of all, what do we say about our interactions? Are we an organization or an organism? It is an organism, it's not just passing information along. Here, there's these books. Here, take this data. It's not just an organization, it's an organism. So we're talking about life, as we said, it's the life of Christ between and among us. That's going to make it not just a data dump. Here's information.

Where is what we're going to place in the mind of another believer? Where is that going to come from? What are we going to be placing in their mind? Yeah, it's truth out of God's Word. It's what is God's perspective? What is God's view on this and this and this? We're going to be passing along truth from Scripture.

And notice that nuthateo. What does that mean? It's placing in the mind. How's that different from a data dump? It's targeted. It's specific. It's specific to the situation. It's not just... Yeah, it is not just a here's this stuff. It's not just a here's a wheelbarrow load full of data.

But it is putting it in the mind of another believer. And guess whose mind is in that other believer? The mind of Christ. God? Well, I was thinking back to what Jeremy was saying, the intimacy of what that information is for me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. About Christ. Yeah. It's personal. Yes. Yes.

And in light of that, that when we do our peacemaking, for instance, you know, sharing through the gun, it also has an effect on you. It's one of the things that Irma and I found in doing the pre-marriage counseling of various couples. We always learn from them. We don't know it all. And we have more to learn from the Lord about that. And because we are looking closely at the Word and we know it from Him, we learn from Him also. Yeah. There is a growing that comes from being God's instrument in that situation.

Yeah. Yeah. OK. Yeah. And I think when you talk about, you know, David, it's it's almost like, OK, my responsibility is to tell you the information that I'm clear. I've told you. Yeah. Yeah. Here it is. There's a greater. I put my wheelbarrow in front of you. There you go. Right. There's a greater urgency there, not just. OK, get it all out there.

So that's that other person actually grasps that knowledge. And understanding that it's, again, not us, it's the Holy Spirit that is going to take that knowledge to the other person and help them understand it. So we can't just say, OK, I did my part, I told you what you need to know, now let me go on with my life. But there's the Holy Spirit working through us, and there's more of an urgency in there.

Remember that passage in the first chapter of 2 Corinthians. The word comfort just keeps coming up. And notice who is involved in all that comforting. Here's Paul, the author of this letter. He's involved in that. And those that are with him. And the ones receiving the letter are involved in this comforting. And what's the other thing we notice? God's involved. This is something where it's not just human level. Here's your data.

But God has an involvement alongside us. And that word para, we're not getting real geeky geeky here, para means alongside. God's there alongside. As we're going through things, it's not well God's up there somewhere and I don't know what he's thinking or doing or you know, I don't know if fog is, but he is there alongside us. In the midst of this.

What you're saying there, it also indicates that there's a journey involved. Yes. It's not like, okay, here you go, now you've got it, be free. Yeah. There is a journey and you're continuing on that journey. Good point. Excellent point. There's a journey involved. The other thing about a data dump, it's like I've dumped my data, see, I'm gone. that you pointed out.

And what happens here instead is continuing relationship. Our relationships are intended by God to continue because there's a journey and we're in this journey together. And Paul made that really clear. He wrote these things to these people but tried diligently to go back and see them again and again. And that also relates to your projects you were talking about. We are all from projects. Yeah, it's God's project, it's God's process. None of us have that graduation badge. No. Here was Paul.

Here he wrote half the books of the New Testament and he writes to the Philippians and he says, you know, I've not arrived yet. 3 verses 12 through 14 in there. I've not attained it yet. I'm not there yet. I'm here, I'm writing inspired scripture, but I'll just tell you, I'm not there yet.

We don't get to a place where, okay, you're my project, and we'll just kind of work on this project until I get an A. No, it doesn't work that way, does it? It becomes one body, one life. Yes. I mean, you would not like it. You would not like it. Let me tell you, if your arm just thought of you as a project, You know, I'm done, whoops! You know?

We are all connected by God's intent. And one part doesn't call the other part a project. And that's why we see repeatedly the reference to the church as the body of Christ. We as believers have a connectedness that is intended to continue and an intimacy of connection. And that's where this all comes into play here.

These words are not so that, you know, one person speaks with arrogance to another. These words are not so that, you know, somebody is our project and we drop them. These words are not such that, okay, here's your data, see ya. But this is a continuing, thank you Donna, this is a continuing journey, ongoing process that involves ongoing relationship. with all of us. That's what he has in mind. That's what he has in mind. And it is not in some antiseptic hypothetical realm either.

We've seen some of these passages out of 1st and 2nd Corinthians. He wrote to those people. It's in chapter 6. And he lists some of the things that they were involved in. bad stuff. One of them is rent-a-boy. And he says, such were some of you. So we're not talking about people that live in some emotionally and socially antiseptic world. We're talking about really, really awful. But he says, you've been washed. And so these words are not in some isolated environment, but it's dealing with real life too.

So these words, this is wonderful stuff. This is wonderful stuff. This is the life of Christ lived out. Like I put it before, in us, through us, and between and among us. And this is wonderful because there is nothing like it on the planet. Nothing like it on the planet. This is great stuff. So anyway, before I start crying, let's pray.

Lord, we do thank you. We just thank you for the tremendous thing that you've set in place. The work that you are doing, the journey you have us on, and the relationships that you have intended to continue. And Lord, each one of us is in a place of learning what marvelous and deep and rich and wonderful things you have already done in our lives and are in the process of doing and yet will do in time to come. And so we thank you for these insights. We just pray for our time together as we start these couple of quarters here. This is exceedingly rich stuff we're digging into. And so we just give you thanks. In Jesus' name, Amen.